More than two thousand years ago, Greek medicine attributed some women's ailments to a uterus that moved through the body as if it were a restless and mischievous animal. It was believed that it could cause choking, convulsions, pain, or fainting depending on the place where it moved. It was even recommended to use pleasant or unpleasant odors to make it return to its place. Over the centuries, hysteria, a word derived from the Greek hystéra (uterus), became a label that grouped together very diverse manifestations, often interpreted based on the gender stereotypes and prejudices of each era. When medicine did not know how to explain what was happening to women, it seemed that the answer was always found in the fact of being women.

“They told me I had three months to live.” In 2016, Elena Madorell was 49 years old, full of desire to live, and had a dire diagnosis of metastatic cancer. A few months earlier, she had found a lump in her left groin, and a biopsy had revealed it was melanoma, even though she had no skin lesions. She underwent surgery to remove the affected lymph nodes, but half a year later, the cancer had spread to her lungs and liver.

A Barcelona court has summoned a doctor from a private hospital to testify as an investigated party for the alleged discrimination suffered by a patient when he spoke in Catalan during an emergency room visit, as reported by the ACN. According to the complainant, the woman said she would not attend to the man if he did not speak to her in Spanish. The court order complies with the mandate of the Barcelona Court, which revoked the initial dismissal and demanded an investigation into the events. The patient, a victim of the alleged linguistic aggression, will testify on the same day, December 1stas reported by Acció Cassandra.

Science also travels along secondary roads. It is not only explained in university classrooms, at specialized congresses, or in laboratories. It can also reach a rural school, a municipal hall, or a town square in a small village, far from the main urban centers. With this premise, the Micropobles i Ciència (Microtowns and Science) project has toured nine Catalan locations this year to bring scientific knowledge closer to the rural population. The journey ended last Saturday in Els Torms, in Les Garrigues.

A medicine graduate from the UdL with master's degrees in bioethics and public health, Oriol Yuguero (Lleida, 1984) has always been precocious. Not only because in 2021 he was awarded the ICS Young Researcher Prize, but because he founded the first Medical Students' Council in 2005, was a councillor at the Paeria in his early twenties, a general practitioner at 29, and at just 40 he became the director of Emergencies for the entire province, from where he drove the transformation of the service. Last summer, he was appointed manager of the two public hospitals in the city of Lleida after winning the first public call for applications held for this position.

Excessive screen use and few hours of sleep and outdoor time, along with other factors such as hereditary ones, are turning myopia into one of the refractive defects that most frequently affect adolescents and young people. In fact, a study by the Faculty of Optics and Optometry of Terrassa at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) points out that childhood myopia almost triples between the ages of 8 and 12. The Childhood Visual Health Cohort of Terrassa (CISViT) research project, developed by the Vision, Optometry and Health (VOS) research group of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia - BarcelonaTech (UPC), linked to the Faculty of Optics and Optometry of Terrassa (FOOT), reveals unprecedented longitudinal data on the child population of southern Europe. Initiated in 2021, the project currently has more than 2,500 participants.

After months of shortages in Spanish pharmacies, the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices (AEMPS) has given the green light to the importation from abroad of Lenzetto, an estradiol spray used in hormone replacement therapy to treat the symptoms of menopause and which is also prescribed to trans women and non-binary people. The measure, however, is not a general authorization to access the medication, but rather, for the moment, only a limited number of units have been imported, which is why the supply will be reserved, as the organization specifies in a statement, for "those patients who most need the drug and cannot use other available treatments".

French health authorities confirmed this Thursday the death of a man infected with the Shamonda virus, a pathogen transmitted mainly by mosquitoes to cattle, sheep, and goats, which until now was considered to have a low infection capacity in humans. In fact, this is the first documented and reported detection of this emerging disease in humans.

The US multinational Hologic, specialized in women's health, has reached an agreement to acquire the biotech company Reveal Genomics, a firm founded in Barcelona in 2020 and focused on the development of genomic tests for the personalized treatment of breast cancer.

A master's thesis and its author's enthusiasm to generate change are the origin of The Blue Box, thestart-up from Catalonia that has taken the prize in the Health category of this first edition of the FAR Awards, organized by the newspaper ARA. The company, co-founded by biomedical engineer Judith Giró, inventor of the biomedical device that gives it its name and which aspires to replace mammograms as a breast cancer screening method, is on its way to becoming a revolution.

Despite the advances, lung cancer remains the deadliest cancer in the world. Now Catalonia is taking another step to improve its prevention. Starting in 2027, the Department of Health will offer lung cancer screenings to people over 60 who have smoked at least one pack a day for thirty years. Later on, the measure will be extended to other population groups that could benefit from early diagnosis.

Life expectancy in Catalonia is very high: the most updated data (2024) place it at 86.6 years for women and 81.6 for men. But the demographic and social reality is complex. There are more chronic diseases and situations of dependency and frailty, more mental health problems and more socioeconomic inequalities, which is why the years lived in good health drop to 67 for women and 68 for men. In other words: Catalan women live 19 years of their lives with low or poor quality of life, and Catalan men 13. "The challenge now is not to live more years, but with more health, well-being and autonomy. This is the great change we are proposing," stated the Minister of Health, Olga Pané, during the presentation of the tenth Health Plan of Catalonia.

María José Correa was 12 years old when she began vomiting large amounts of blood. "They were clots the size of a hand," she describes. She had never experienced any serious health problems and her family was scared. Doctors in her native Vitoria identified that she was suffering from a digestive hemorrhage caused by a clot in the portal vein, which is responsible for transporting blood from the intestine and spleen to the liver. The girl had to be urgently transferred to the Vall d'Hebron Hospital, where she underwent a pioneering, minimally invasive operation that was a complete success. In fact, by the next day she was already able to lead a completely normal life and today she has no sequelae or complications.

In the fifties, Japan was the scene of an industrial pollution catastrophe. A factory belonging to the company Chisso [now JNC] dumped wastewater containing methylmercury into the sea, a highly toxic compound that accumulated in the fish and seafood that the population then consumed. In 1956, Minamata disease was identified, which caused irreversible neurological damage. In some cases, those affected were babies, because their mothers had been exposed during pregnancy. Among them was Tomoko Uemura, who died at 21 and became the symbol of this tragedy. Seven decades later, and in different parts of the world, this poison for living beings continues to exist and now a study published in Science warns that it hides risks for ecosystems and human health: the climate crisis could favor the mobilization of mercury accumulated over centuries.

The data does not allow us to state that Catalonia has fully entered an epidemic of respiratory viruses, but it does show that cases are on the rise at a fairly high rate. The Information System for the Surveillance of Infections in Catalonia (Sivic) confirms that in the last week with updated information (from September 21 to 27) there were 44,000 affected people across the country, predominantly by rhinovirus. This represents a 26% increase compared to the previous week. "At the clinic, we are seeing an increase in cases, but the truth is that we are still at minimum levels of transmission. In adults, cold viruses are basically circulating," explains Jordi Mestres, a family doctor at the CAP Sanllehy in Barcelona and a member of the Catalan Society of Family and Community Medicine (Camfic).

Catalonia has been free of endemic terrestrial rabies for some time, but in recent years there has been growing concern about the airborne transmission of this disease. To the point that the Department of Health has issued a call to the population to avoid contact with bats. It does so as a preventive measure because attacks by these animals—which are currently the main carriers of this disease—are on the rise.

New step in the fight against cancer. An international team of researchers led by the Brain Metastasis Group of the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) of Spain has discovered a previously unknown phase of metastasis development that could be key to fighting brain cancer even before the first symptoms appear. According to the research, published in the journal Cancer Cell, before reaching the brain, these cells go through a stage in which they are especially vulnerable and could be effectively eliminated if attacked with the appropriate drugs.

"Until recently, Catalonia had 27 methods of collecting medical data." With this fact, the president of the Biological Sciences Section of the Institute for Catalan Studies (IEC), Jaume Reventós, has attempted to show one of the risks we run when using artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine today and in the future. He did so in a debate organized by the IEC itself and ARA, in which the president of the Science and Technology Section of the IEC, Alícia Casals, also participated, and which was moderated by the head of the Society section of ARA, Gemma Garrido Granger.

Health problems derived from intensive screen exposure are no longer a future threat for the youngest: they are a reality. The consequences vary according to the life stage, but the combination of risks over the years can favor the appearance of pathologies, some irreversible, among children and adolescents. From 0 to 6 years old, the inadequate use of technologies can cause them to start speaking later, develop myopia, or have motor difficulties. Between 7 and 11 years old, it can worsen sleep, favor overweight and the appearance of cavities, and affect academic performance. And from 12 to 18 years old, it can increase emotional distress, distort self-image, and increase vulnerability to patterns of violence and harassment, inside and outside of social networks.

In our daily life there are elements that, without knowing it, may be making us slowly ill. Some we are getting to know better, such as the microplastics that sneak into the food we have on our table, but others are more invisible and we find it difficult to identify them.